Meet Tom Haverford, the smooth-talking, underachieving small-town US-government official with big city dreams. Tom's real name is Darwish Sabir Ismael Gani. However, he felt the need to acquire a more American moniker for political appeal, of course, and thus was born Thomas Montgomery Haverford.

He's an Indian-American from the Deep South, a full-time serial-entrepreneur and parttime administrator in the parks department in the town of Pawnee, Indiana. His boss thinks he's Libyan and he married his white Canadian friend to help her get a green card. Tom Haverford is one of the main characters in the critically acclaimed US comedy television series Parks & Recreation and is played by popular American comedian Aziz Ansari.

In the past, Indian characters in commercial western productions were one of the following: fat maharajas who feast on an appetizer of raw monkey brains, sadhus and gurus who put lost western folk on the true path, impatient drivers in cabs that smell like curry, grumpy convenience store owners and Hrundi Bakshi, the eternal bumbling foreigner. Now, of course, times have changed.

A clip from Indian actress Priyanka Chopra's debut single 'In My City' featuring Will.i.am from The Black Eyed Peas played before one of the most keenly contested matches in America's National Football League, the Chicago Bears squaring off against the Green Bay Packers. The match was watched by 8.6 million viewers.

While it's too early to say if the song marks the transformation of Chopra from Bollywood star to pan-global pop sensation a la Rihanna or Shakira, it's another sign of the change when it comes to India and Indian characters in Western popular culture. They may still be bumbling foreigners (green card holders or not) but they are also scientists, doctors and book keepers, presidents of the math club or call-centre employees who take jobs from hardworking 'real' Americans.

Furthermore, and this is perhaps the biggest difference of all, these characters are, more often than not, played by actual Indians or actors with Indian roots and the right skin colour. Forget Caucasians with faces covered in soot playing pesky Indians. We've gone two steps further; there's been a reversal of sorts with Indian actors filling in as presidents of fictional mid-east kingdoms like Kamistan (Anil Kapoor in 24) or as Palestinian girls (Freida Pinto in Miral) struggling to cope with the realities of a state ravaged by war.

A fair bunch of Indian characters have infiltrated family-viewing time in Western homes through the telly. Characters like The Big Bang Theory's Rajesh 'Raj' Koothrappali, PhD, and astrophysicist working at Caltech, who turns mute in the company of women (the only cure is intoxication or an unapproved drug with dire side effects,) and who breaks out into a Bollywood style musical number with his best friend Howard Wolowitz's girl. "My heart, my universe," he sings, as the lovers run around each other with an army of back-up dancers in tow. "Like the wild elephant I am trumpeting my love for you." Of course it's all a dream and very soon Raj wakes up, confused and delighted. And so have the capitals of entertainment in the West, in a manner of speaking.

Then there are characters on shows like NBC's short-lived Outsourced, a sitcom about people working at a call-centre in Mumbai led by a reluctant American boss and an overzealous Indian second in command. It had a cast of mostly Westerners of Indian origin , comedians like American Parvesh Cheena and British film and stage actors like Sacha Dhawan, among others.

And, just last week, FOX launched a new sitcom titled The Mindy Project. The series follows the rather intriguing professional and personal life of Dr Mindy Lahiri, an Indian-American OB/GYN. Vera Chokalingam (more popularly known as Mindy Kaling) who plays Lahiri is not only the lead actor but the writer. She also wrote and acted in The Office, the hit show which popularised the mockumentary format on the small screen. Already The Mindy Project has received positive reviews and is being hailed by some sections of the American press as the next big thing on TV. It's a small step and a giant leap. According to Hari Kondabolu, Indian-American stand-up comic from New York and writer for FX's Totally Biased with W Kamau Bell; "Being an Indian kid in America meant you didn't exist in television and films. We were desperate for any kind of representation. So Apu on The Simpsons was exciting at the time even though he's a caricature voiced by a white guy.